Winter Green

In dry summers we forget the life that survives drought, living in the crooks and crannies on the barren trunks and branches of older trees. Then, after days upon days of pressing heat and caustic light, rains fall and woody bones come alive again, not with their own vigor, which is waning, but with a rebirth of fern, lush and green in a browning world, and on misty mornings when leaves are wet, you can hear laughter from little the people among the fronds.